If A Foreigner Dies
In Puerto Escondido

Here’s the choice: your dead body is sent by the
funeral home in Puerto to Oaxaca to be cremated, a) folded
up in a bag, b) in a coffin. Price difference, 6,000 pesos.

Cemetery, Barra de ColotepecPhoto: Ernesto J. Torres

But wait, why did you choose cremation? Maybe you want your
ashes buried in the family plot in the U.S. or Canada or some other
place. Fair enough. But if you were thinking of expense or the environment,
you might want to reconsider.

A funeral plot in Colotepec’s two cemeteries is free, as in no
charge. It doesn’t matter if you died in the part of Puerto Escondido
that belongs to San Pedro Mixtepec. For a few thousand pesos,
your coffin is buried and you rot away. I’ve heard that up until a few
years ago, the graves were dug deep and had a dirt foundation.
Now, they aren’t so deep and have a cement base. Cremation, on
the other hand, involves a very hot, energy consuming fire. And it
requires more paper-work than burial does.

The Puerto Escondido cemetery has run out of space.Photo: Ernesto J. Torres

I, like some other long-term foreign residents of Puerto, will be
buried in the cemetery in the Barra de Colotepec. In the movie version
of my passing, my son will have flown here from San Francisco
in time to hold my hand as I breathe my last breath. Then he will
sign the death certificate, having his passport
and mine at hand, and be at my grave within less
than 24 hours.

Plan B, I have given a friend power-of-attorney,
witnessed by a notary, for my remains and
to administer my property until my son arrives.
A long-time foreign resident of Puerto died from
a bee sting this year, but because they were not
legally married, her partner could not handle the
funeral arrangements. The embassy first had to
contact her next-of-kin.

There are no burial societies in Puerto as
there are in the U.S. Here your family is expected
to raise the cash. However, you can make arrangements
and pay the funeral home before
you take your leave. This is an option chosen by
some foreigners with terminal diseases.

Speaking of sick people, some ex-pats prefer
to go the alternative medicine route, instead of seeking treatment
from licensed doctors. Not a good idea for when you die and you
need your doctor to sign the certificate. This year a dear friend died
in the local hospital a few hours after arrival. He had been very ill
for months, but he had not seen a licensed physician. So, his body
was immediately whisked away by the authorities for an autopsy to
rule out foul-play, and his widow had to make a declaration at the
prosecutor’s office before he could be cremated.

Back in 2013 when I did an article on
When a Foreigner Dies
in Puerto, there were only two mortuaries in town. Now there are
three. The oldest and most economical (remember the body in a
bag?) is Funerales Alcalá just off the
Rinconada next to the hotel
Xaiba. Before Juan Carlos Alcalá Gopar and his wife Catalina Patiño
opened their funeral parlor in 1972, coffins were hand made by local
carpenters. (Puerto had just under 3,500 residents back then.)
The coffins at Funerales Alcalá were manufactured in Oaxaca, a sign
of the town’s growing prosperity. Now, the mortuary’s rustic simplicity
seems like a throwback to earlier times.

Victoria Eugenia Martínez, Funerales DíazPhoto: Ernesto J. Torres

When Armando Carreño and his wife Victoria Eugenia Martínez
Iturribarría took over Funerales Diaz in
1990, the population had
reached 8,000. In 2014, it moved to its present location
on Highway 200 next to the Volkswagen
showroom. Among other amenities, like air conditioning
and new hearses, it features a chapel
for funeral services. It is by far the favorite funeral
parlor for foreigners. It is also the most costly.
Don Armando passed away in 2014, but his widow
keeps the business running.

Funerales Martínez. Photo: Barbara Joan Schaffer

Funerales Martínez, located
next to the public
hospital in the Parota neighborhood, opened
in 2014 and is managed by Noe De La Cruz who
got his start working at Funerales Diaz. It doesn’t
have a chapel but it does have a hammock.
Which is to say that the showroom is large and
the atmosphere unpretentious. If you want to be
cremated, your body will be put in a coffin and
the price, with the cheapest coffin, is close to
that of Funerales Diaz. When asked why he did
not offer the cheaper, body-in-a-bag option, Noe
was shocked. He said the road to Oaxaca is full of
twists and turns and you wouldn’t the body to move this way and
that as if it were a dead animal. Hmm, something to consider.

The vast majority of foreigners who die in Puerto are cremated
and many have their ashes sent back to their home countries. All
the funeral parlors have experience with this.

Prices. We asked each funeral parlor for its cheapest rates. Of course,
when your loved one passes you will be shown coffins a great deal
more expensive. Just like when you go shopping for anything.

Cremation: $9,000 at the crematorium in Oaxaca City. There is a
new crematorium in Juchitán, but all the funeral homes in Puerto
use the Oaxaca facility. Add to that the mortuary’s fees including
coffin, transportation, ashes in a box, and paperwork.

These are the lowest rates, including the cremation, offered at each
mortuary as of May, 2017.

Power of Attorney: If the next-of-kin is not in
Puerto, unless the deceased had given someone
power of attorney for his or her remains,
the body will be embalmed and held until the
embassy contacts that person and notarized
instructions and payments are made. The death certificate will also
be held up, which means heirs will not be able to collect insurance,
etc. Funerales Díaz and Funerales Mártinez are very strict about
this. Funerales Alcalá, however, only requires the passport of the
deceased and the passport of the person paying the bills.

Lic. Alina Félix, Notaria 128: 1,500 pesos

First you must:
If death occurs outside of a hospital, you must IMMEDIATELY
call the doctor. Do NOT call an ambulance (that will
lead to more complications). Then call the funeral home, it will
pick up the body and get the death certificate (certificado de defunción)
from the Civil Registry for the doctor to fill out. The funeral
home will then bring the signed certificate back to the Civil Registry
where it will be stamped. The funeral home will then send the
original by courier service to the embassy.

When there is a death among the local Mexican community,
the custom is to hold a wake in the family home, with a brass band,
and then bury the body the next day following the funeral mass.
A band also plays at the grave side. Members of the community
donate money to help cover the costs. Typically, the only contact
most locals have with a funeral parlor is the purchase of the coffin.